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Radical Sovereignty: Documenting Indigenous Autonomy Across Indian Country During the Boarding School Era

October 29, 2024 @ 8:00 am - 5:00 pm CDT
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Thurman J. White Forum Building
1704 Asp Ave
Norman, OK 73072 United States


Over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the U.S. federal government engaged in a systematic project of conquest through civilization. A key facet of this imperial endeavor by the imposition of Western forms of architecture onto Indigenous landscapes, including day and boarding schools. These concrete structures were accompanied by assimilationist policies that imposed the English language, Christianity, sedentism, agriculture, nuclear households, and “civilized dress” onto Indigenous people. While day and boarding schools were part of an oppressive colonial system, these institutions also existed within a broader set of everyday place-making practices informed by Indigenous cultural values and goals.
Collectively, Native place-making practices represent what Laura Harjo calls “radical sovereignty”; spatial expressions of Indigenous worldviews that ensured community futurity. Drawing on archival evidence from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Jesse
H. Bratley collections at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and object-based interviews conducted with tribal members, I document acts of radical sovereignty on the Rosebud reservation in South Dakota and the Cheyenne and Arapaho reserve in Oklahoma. This comparative approach points to the central role of mobility and kinship networks in facilitating Lakota, Cheynne, and Arapaho autonomy and the collective survival of these communities.

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Contact

Kaylyn Moore
Phone
4798830384
Email
kaylyn.l.moore@ou.edu
View Contact Website

Venue

Thurman J. White Forum Building
1704 Asp Ave
Norman, OK 73072 United States
+ Google Map
Phone
4798830384
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